This blog continues the discussion that we began with Epic Journey: The 2008 Elections and American Politics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009).The latest book in this series is Defying the Odds: the 2016 Elections and American Politics.

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Defying the Odds

New book about the 2016 election.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Pro-Gingrich Super PAC and an Anti-Romney Documentary

The ads are expected to overtly criticize the company Romney founded, Bain Capital. A general preview of the coming anti-Romney campaign provided to the Los Angeles Times included footage from a new documentary in which an announcer says Bain's "greed was matched only a willingness to do anything to make millions in profits."

...The Times reviewed a portion of the new film, which has high production values and is presented as a documentary. Called “When Mitt Romney Came to Town,” the video focuses on four companies that Bain took over in the 1980s and 1990s. It includes interviews with workers and residents in Marion, Ind., where a plant owned by Ampad was shut down after Bain acquired the firm.

“Wall Street’s corporate raiders made billions of dollars," an announcer intones, at the beginning of the film, citing the "greed" of Wall Street's leveraged buyout firms. "Nothing mattered but profits. This film is about one such raider and his firm.”

The rights to the film were purchased late last week by “Winning Our Future” a "super PAC" backing Gingrich. Outtakes have been made into ads that are likely to begin airing Monday in South Carolina, according to a person familiar with the plan who asked not to be identified.

...

“Mitt Romney claims he helped create jobs when, in fact, he destroyed jobs, destroyed families, communities and marriages,” said Rick Tyler, a longtime aide to Gingrich who is now a senior advisor to the super PAC “Winning the Future,” which bought rights to the documentary. “Don’t tell me you are are ‘Mr. Job Creation’ when you have destroyed thousands of jobs,” Tyler said in an interview Saturday morning.

Tyler recently said: "We’re Newt’s super PAC. We take out marching orders through the media for Newt Gingrich. I do what Newt tells me through the media. And it’s all within the confines of the law.”